


on the other hand

by fridayivy



Category: The Human Game (Webcomic)
Genre: [hand starts hitting gregor hammond] STOP HITTING YOURSELF, also feat: A SURPRISE HUMAN GAME GUEST, some minor body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 03:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fridayivy/pseuds/fridayivy
Summary: Gregor Hammond has an injury. It haunts him. (A drabble featuring a certain mysterious scientist from The Human Game.)





	on the other hand

The bandages on his hand are tight. They have to be tighter.

It’s become a nervous habit of his, lately, to pull at the end of the bandage with his other hand and feel the slight spark of pain as it compresses his skin. It’s almost a way to confirm that his hand is trapped, it’s confined, it’s unable to be released. It’s only been a week since the accident, but he’s already developed a complex over it, it seems.

Maybe it’s because of the nightmares.

The others don’t know. He’s just smiled whenever they asked how the wound was and how he got it, waving it off as “painful, nothing more, and it was just an accident”. He doesn’t tell them that sometimes, he’s dreamed that his hand has grown sightless, glassy eyes, that sometimes in his dreams it’s detached itself and strangled him like it has a mind of its own.

Nobody wants to hear that, of course.

This must all be happening because of that  _thing_. Miraculous, yet so inherently wrong at the same time. Should he worship it as a relic? Should he cast it into flames and denounce its existence? He doesn’t know. His prayers offer him no answers. His dreams offer him quite the _opposite_  of answers. But either way, it’s done this to him, it sits in the back of his mind like the certain type of darkness that is unable to be swept away in a room’s corners when you turn on the light. It haunts him. My God, it haunts him.

He locked it up from further inspection for the time being. One of his coworkers joked that he was doing the right thing – after all, he said, they didn’t want to become the scientists in a science fiction film who messed with someone they didn’t understand and got themselves killed for it, right?

He had nodded and laughed when hearing that, but the fear that draped over his heart like a shroud was anything but a joke.

(Honestly, part of the reason why he locked it away was because he didn’t want it  _looking_  at him anymore, like it knew something he didn’t.)

But even though he hadn’t seen the thing that gave him this wound that was trapped in so many bandages since then, it was messing with him. It had to be. Because now, when he was writing up some data on the little Minim project he was working on in his spare time, he thought he saw something.

Tendrils of black, peeking out from behind the bandages, searching, growing, slithering, shifting,  _existing_.

He rushed out of his office, a strangled scream in his throat, shoving aside the poor janitor currently coming out of the bathroom in the hallway. The man’s cap fell off – he momentarily saw a questioning, wide-eyed look underneath a mop of shaggy, messy hair – and then he was inside, shutting himself immediately in one of the stalls.

The bandages have been wound so tight that it almost felt weird pulling them off, like it’s a second skin. They come off easy, thanks to the way he put them on (well, it isn’t like hasn’t had any experience with binding something before this), and he takes a deep breath before he looks down on his now bare hand.

There’s nothing. Nothing at all. He’s seeing things. Only a scar along the edge of his palm, still crusted red, but nothing else.

He lets out a sigh of relief, conscious that he’s been trembling the entire time. It’s okay. It’s fine. The stress of the project is getting to him, that’s all. He shakes his head, leaning on the wall. Deep breaths. In and out. He’s not losing it, he’s not going mad, it’s not like anything is having an influence on him…

“Hey, are you alright?”

A voice sounds out from outside his stall. He peers through the crack at the edge of the door, seeing the janitor standing a few feet away, eyebrows creased in an expression of concern. Ah, well, rushing in here probably did look rather strange…

“I’m just fine, thank you,” he says, after clearing his throat, already twisting the bandage back around his hand again. “Just had a bit of a panic attack! No worries.”

“Oh. Well, I know how that feels…”

“Then you know what I’m dealing with.”

There was a pause, then an awkward huff, and then the sound of footsteps as the janitor leaves. He’s alone again. Good. He glances down at his hand, and quickly wraps the rest of the bandage around his hand, enveloping the wound back in its cotton-walled prison.

No more tendrils. No more hallucinations. He had work to do, after all. He was the preeminent scientist at Achronicity, and god willing, he shouldn’t break down like this over nothing. He had to be strong. The work he was doing was going to revolutionize so much, and he wasn’t going to let a stupid thing like this set him back as he moved towards a future that was just in his grasp.

But even so, as he leaves, he reaches over and tightens the bandage around his hand as hard as he can.

Just for good measure.


End file.
